As an investor in a Premier League football club and a collector of steam locomotives, Jeremy Hosking is used to expensive pursuits.

The multimillionaire asset manager is under no illusions that his offer to fund well in excess of 100 local campaigns to unseat pro-Remain MPs could prove to be another. “This is going to stretch the bank’s ability to send out cheque books in a timely manner,” he says. “There is going to be a lot of ink involved.”

Millionaire Brexit donor targets 140 Remain MPs in general election

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The amount Hosking has already spent in pursuit of securing Britain’s departure from the European Union shows his dedication to the cause. He gave about £1.7m to Vote Leave and even set up his own poster campaign, Brexit Express, as the referendum approached.

Now the Crystal Palace co-owner wants to safeguard the result by funding Tory candidates trying to gain seats where most voters backed Brexit. He will do so through his Brexit Express campaign.

“For me, it is a long-running issue about sovereignty and the transfer of power,” he says. “It wouldn’t matter so much if the EU was constitutionalised properly, but one of the great things about being a democracy is we can boot the government out every five years, but we couldn’t boot out the EU.

“A lot of the Remainers I know were really reformers – they held their nose and voted Remain in much the same way we are suggesting that traditional Labour voters should on this occasion hold their nose and vote Tory.”

Hosking’s project is testing perhaps the most pertinent question posed by this election. Will the political fissure created by the EU referendum convince voters to abandon their traditional affiliations and back a party that more closely represents their views on Brexit?

The candidates eligible for his money must meet two simple tests. They must be a Conservative candidate trying to unseat an opposition MP that backed Remain. They must also be contesting a seat where most voters are believed to have voted in favour of Brexit.

His team has come up with a list of 138 constituencies that they think fit the bill. All will be eligible for donations of up to £5,000 each.

Hosking says that while Theresa May was not his 'number one choice' as leader, he believes she is handling Brexit well

While there are some Lib Dems, SNP and Plaid Cymru-held seats on the list, the campaign is aimed overwhelmingly at Tories trying to win Labour-held seats in the north and the Midlands.

There is a string of such seats that the Tories have a chance of winning. They include Coventry South, Bury South, Dewsbury, Gedling, Halifax and Bishop Auckland – a seat that has returned a Labour MP since 1935.

Hosking says that while Theresa May was not his “number one choice” as leader, he believes she is handling the Brexit issue well so far. He also believes that a cohort of Tory MPs from Brexit-supporting Labour seats could be key in safeguarding the referendum result and prevent any “backsliding”.

“We need all the Brexiteers on the same side,” he says. “We can’t do this Brexit thing with half the Brexiteers outside the tent.

“The thinking is, it would be strange if the Conservative party was dusting off inveterate Remainers to fight these seats… the Conservative party is more Brexit-orientated than it was a year ago.”

Unlike some Brexiteers, Hosking knows there could be some bumpy times ahead. “We need the best team and you need the army fully equipped and as big as possible,” he says. “That is why we end up in this position in Brexit Express of supporting Tory candidates. It is not because we love the Tory party.

“If we take back sovereignty, there might be some short-term economic pain, but I can’t see how it can be a big mistake. I do understand the trade-off, but not in the long-run. In the long-run, countries are always attempting to promote trade between them, and that will happen to us.

“It is going to be a lot of hard work so we need the best team there, and we need all the Brexiteers there – particularly the Brexiteers in the Labour heartlands. I think that will do a lot for Brexit.”

It reflects a belief among some Brexiteers that new Tory MPs who have won their seats by reflecting their constituents’ views on Brexit will be more committed than anyone to delivering it.

Mark Wallace, executive editor of the Tory grassroots website ConservativeHome, said that incoming candidates in such seats could well owe much to both the prime minister and their unequivocal backing for Brexit.

“A lot of MPs will be keenly aware that they owe their seats to the prime minister,” he said. “Just as important is to look at the profile of seats they appear to be targeting. A lot of them are constituencies that voted for Leave overall.

“The new MPs will feel a debt of loyalty to the prime minister, but they will also be keenly aware that some of them – looking at the current polling – could be the first Conservative MP for the seat for decades. In that circumstance, they will of course have an eye on how they retain these seats.

“For some time, the question has been how to overcome the negative power of the Conservative brand in some places and the positive power of multi-generational Labour voting. It seems in some cases that Ukip has fractured that, but the Conservatives are also looking at straight switchers from Labour to the Conservatives.”

Tory insiders said it was not yet clear whether the parliamentary party would be more likely to back a soft Brexit after the election.

Some high-profile Leave campaigners have failed to find a seat. Syed Kamall, leader of the Conservatives in the European parliament, missed out. Daniel Hannan, a leading voice for Brexit, was not shortlisted for safe Aldershot, despite being favoured by the local association.

However, leading campaigners for Brexit have been selected in some seats. Nick Varley, who led the ground campaign for Vote Leave, is the Tory candidate in Tynemouth. Eddie Hughes, prominent in his local Leave campaign, will fight the target seat of Walsall North. Paul White, the north-west director of Vote Leave, is running in Burnley. Matt Smith, a policy analyst for the Leave campaign, is running in Cardiff West.

Whatever the balance of Brexit opinion in the 2017 Tory intake, Conservative Brexiters remain confident that many of their new colleagues will be fellow guardians of the referendum result.

“When that election night map comes out and you see where the new Tory seats are, these will be constituencies that haven’t elected a Tory before and maybe won’t again,” said one.

“These MPs are going to be representing broken Britain, disappointed Britain, non-Oxbridge Britain. They are the people who will have sent those guys to parliament.”